Shick has already filed the 2017 tax return for her “ministry,” Help 4 Families. She reported zero revenues and zero assets. If anyone actually did donate via her website she probably grabbed it for personal expenses. Who knows? It doesn't seem like she is serving up a whole lot of help 4 anyone.

In California there are two bills before the legislature that would make conversion therapy by anyone on anyone illegal. A pastor could still counsel someone with gender dysphoria or someone who is gay providing that money is not exchanged. First Shick's enemy is medical science:

Two new bills proposed in that legislative body, 2119 and 2934, seem to assume that truth need not harmonize with facts; it’s better to believe comforting myths than black-and-white facts. These bills argue that children born biologically as one gender can just as likely be the opposite gender, the obvious physical facts notwithstanding.

Uh, Denise, incongruent gender and natal sex have been understood by medical science for 75 years or so. It is an issue of fact. Writing that it is a myth doesn't change the fact.

She gets worse:

Worse yet, these bills go dangerously beyond questioning plain, objective facts. If passed, they would effectively silence those who dare to oppose their authors’ delusions — facts be damned.

No Denise. As much as you crave victimization, no one is silenced because they disapprove of gay people or transgender people. And again, just because you say something is fact doesn't make it a fact. Facts are not arbitrary. Gay people exist and transgender people exist and there doesn't seem to be any peer reviewed research that either gender identity or sexual orientation are voluntary. You cannot make shit up as you go along and claim it to be factual.

She gets downright separated from reality:

The bill numbered AB 2934 “would prevent a counselor from helping an adult client explore all options to address questions over sexual orientation, an author from selling a book challenging gender identity ideology, and even a church from hosting a ticketed conference addressing issues of sexuality and identity.”

Those are Shick's quotation marks. I do not know who she is quoting — perhaps its her id — but most of that is not true. Nothing would prevent a book or that church event. Stupidity is sadly and persistently legal in this country. As for the counselor helping someone explore options, neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are optional.

Subsequent to a fractured explanation of puberty blockers:

If little Billy tells his progressive parents he thinks he is Suzy, a girl, and they get him started on the drugs, and then a few years later Suzy realizes he really is a boy, can the drug effects be undone? At least one prominent study concluded that it’s too early to answer that question.

Okay. First of all there are plenty of conservative people with transgender children. My own Republican Congresswoman got a wake-up call in that regard. Secondly, the child would, hopefully, be in the care of qualified clinicians who help both the child and his or her parents. Shick's “prominent study” is a blog post to the conservative Christian New Atlantis which is obviously not peer-reviewed. Prominent studies are published to scholarly academic journals that do subject articles to peer review.

The folks who actually perform original research and then succeed in publishing their findings to peer-reviewed scholarly journals inform us that it is extremely rare for a child to desist past the age of puberty. Nevertheless, what happens if puberty blockers are withdrawn is that the child goes through puberty. It's not terribly dramatic.

Yet advocates want to rush forward with making these puberty blockers easily accessible, and even to mandate that foster kids must have access to them. That’s akin to Chris on “Northern Exposure” arguing that facts be damned; people are better off believing what they choose to believe about Napoleon.

Oy veh. The intent is to make sure that kids in the foster care system have access if medically necessary. Medical necessity is not determined by evil activists. It is determined by qualified psychiatrists who are experienced in dealing with this issue. The notion that people with gender dysphoria are comparable to people who think they are Napoleon is medically inaccurate and bigoted.

Medical science has determined that some people do have a gender different from natal sex. Autopsies of transgender individuals have even demonstrated that they have some brain structures consistent with the opposite sex and we have known that for over ten years. All it takes is some intellectual curiosity to find out.

But hold on, it gets even sadder. As Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, said, 45 states have laws restricting minors from getting tattoos, but doctors are allowed to perform double mastectomies on girls as young as 16, without parental permission, if they’ve been on puberty blockers for a full year. Permanent mutilations based solely on decisions made by kids who can’t decide what to order at McDonald’s.

Michelle Cretella is the president of a little anti-LGBT hate group. The real peer organization is the American Academy of Pediatrics. Furthermore, this is the result of some hysteria stirred up by Fox News regarding Oregon. The age of medical consent in Oregon is, indeed, 15. However as a practical matter gender-affirming surgery requires parental consent for doctors to operate.

If Shick's intellectual curiosity were greater than a geranium she would not persistently look like an ignorant crackpot. What is really sad is that people want to alter the findings of medical science because of religious beliefs or personal agendas. Those same people want a say in how some people are medically treated and none of them have the qualifications to do so.

Transgender people have an underlying condition that can be professionally diagnosed. It should be left to professionals who have devoted years of their life to study.

Transgender people want what the rest of us want. A good job, some financial security, a decent place to live and maybe to fall in love. People who want to frustrate those desires, those self-righteous fuckwits, are not doing anyone any favors. They really should just mind their own business. Is that really too much to ask for?